


Make a Wish

by captainamergirl



Category: Passions (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 02:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11980125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainamergirl/pseuds/captainamergirl
Summary: Chad comforts a grieving and embittered Gwen.





	Make a Wish

He found her sitting in Harmony Park, watching the sun as it began to dip below the skyline. Normally, he wouldn’t have approached her but the way she looked… so pale… so utterly tragic … Well, he had no choice.  
  
Gwen and Chad had never had very much to say to each other. He was Whitney Russell’s main squeeze after all, and the two of them, they’d unabashedly rooted for Theresa, the skank, to steal Gwen’s husband. Not that Ethan would be her husband for much longer. She was divorcing him, having finally realized that he would always be tethered to Theresa and because of that, she had lost her daughter. Her precious Sarah.  
  
The pain was still so fresh, still so raw. She and Ethan had gone to Los Angeles that summer to see their baby be born and all Gwen had ended up with was a stillborn child in her arms, a little one who never got to take their first breath. She wasn’t sure that there would ever come a time that she could think about Sarah without tears swimming in her eyes - without hatred for Theresa _and_ Ethan eating away at what was left of her soul.  
  
“Is this seat taken?” Chad asked as he pointed to the empty place on the bench beside her. She almost didn’t hear him at first, so lost in her own thoughts she was, and then her instinct was to tell him to go the hell away. But instead, she sighed and gestured to the space.  
  
“It’s a free country,” she said. She scooted over a ways so they wouldn’t have to be very close. He slipped down onto the opposite end of the bench and followed her glassy gaze to the skyline. The red fireball of the setting sun had now disappeared and chilliness was in the air. Fall in Harmony; there was nothing like it, and of course, she’d forgotten her coat. She shivered.  
  
“Cold?” Chad asked simply. _Always, always,_ she thought vacantly.  
  
Before she could reply though, he was shrugging off his black bomber jacket and slipping it over her shoulders. The move required some manner of closeness and she got a whiff of his masculine cologne that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.  
  
She burrowed deep into the material, murmuring a quiet “thank you.”  
  
“Welcome … So what are you doing out here … all by yourself?” Chad asked, sounding casual - or attempting to anyway. Neither quite knew what to say to the other and Gwen wasn’t sure that she even wanted to say anything to him at all. She remembered all too well how he had danced and laughed and carried on at Ethan and Theresa’s engagement party the year before. She could easily hate him for it. Maybe she did. She pretty much hated the whole world right now.  
  
Gwen almost thought about not answering but she finally muttered, _“Thinking…_ I come here to think sometimes - it’s better than the cemetery, I suppose. My mother says I spend too much time there.” Her voice was low and shadowed in hurt, darkness and pain.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Chad said. “I’m really sorry for your loss. I can’t even imagine -”  
  
“No, you can’t,” Gwen snapped. “You can’t imagine what it's like to wake up and hear your child is dead, to tear apart the hospital looking for her, only to find her cold, little body …” She couldn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t dare. The tears were already gathering in her eyes - hot, angry tears. She would not break down in front of Chad Harris of all people. He would probably just tell Whitney, who would tell Theresa, who would proceed to dance around merrily knowing Gwen was in pain. Theresa seemed to get off on Gwen’s pain, although she would have of course denied it.  
  
“I can’t imagine it,” Chad said. “But I can feel sad for you, just the same.”  
  
“Feel sad for me?” Gwen echoed bitterly. “Really?”  
  
“I have a heart, Gwen, a conscience, believe it or not, and I see you sitting here, obviously hurting, and I wish I could just … help somehow.”  
  
Gwen shrugged deeper into his large coat. “Well, you can’t. No one can. My daughter is gone and you can’t bring her back. No one can. And I'm - I’m so angry.”  
  
“I bet even at me,” Chad said.  
  
She looked at him now, eyes blazing. “Why shouldn’t I be? You and your girlfriend encouraged Theresa’s insane plot to ensnare Ethan at every turn; you rooted for ‘fate’ to finally bring them together. Well, it has - and all it cost was the life of my beautiful child.” Now the tears did come, flowing down her face. She was humiliated but she couldn’t stop them, not for anything.  
  
Chad stared at her for a moment and then scooted across the bench to her, slowly sliding his left arm around her heaving shoulders.  
  
“What are you doing?” Gwen demanded, trying to pull away, but he held her fast.  
  
“I just want you to know … You’re not alone, okay? We aren’t close; we’ll probably never be close, especially because we barely know each other … But right now I see your pain, okay? I feel it, and I can’t turn around and pretend I didn’t see and feel it. I don’t know what else to do. If you want to pull away, I won’t stop you this time, but if you just want... to be held, I can do that too.”  
  
Gwen stared up at him, her watery eyes locking on his earnest ones. “Why are you suddenly being so nice to me? Do you pity me that much?”  
  
“No, I don’t pity you,” Chad said. “I grew up without my real parents and I still don’t know who they are. All I wanted as a kid was to be wanted and I know… your baby was … That she still is. She didn’t die unloved and unwanted.”  
  
A sob rose up on her lips and she sputtered, “What if - what if Sarah … what if she didn’t know? How could she have known how much I loved her, how much I wanted her with me? She’ll never know how sorry I am - how sorry I am that I had that fight with Theresa that night. I should have let the bitch go, I should have, but I kept pushing and pushing -” Gwen broke off and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved violently and she felt Chad’s strong, steady hands come to rest on them, squeezing the bones gently, massaging her back. In that moment, she desperately wanted to pull away. She _needed_ to pull away. She would be anything but pitiful for Chad Harris but somehow, she couldn’t bring herself swat his hands away. She could do only one thing, scoot closer to him and burrow herself into the crook of his arm. She rested her head on his chest, hearing his heartbeat thrumming loud and rhythmically in her ear.  
  
“This is stupid,” she said after a long moment of silence. “Crying on your shoulder - your shoulder of all people’s..”  
  
“People tell me I’ve got strong shoulders,” Chad said with a little smile. “And I’m not judging you; I won’t tell anyone about this either. You deserve your privacy and my discretion.”  
  
“Yes, please don’t tell anyone I’m being this pathetic,” Gwen sniffled.  
  
“Is that what you think you are?” Chad said. “Because I don’t want see it that way.”  
  
She looked up at him again. “What do you see?”  
  
“A woman who’s hurting, a woman who’s gone through hell and maybe, just maybe, needs a friend.”  
  
She chuckled mirthlessly. “And you’re offering to be my friend?”  
  
“Yeah, I think I am. I know we don’t make a lot of sense. We’re from totally different worlds … But who says we have to hate each other or keep our distance from each other?”  
  
“Whitney might not like the idea of us being friends.”  
  
He sighed. “Whitney has no say in the matter. ‘Sides, we broke up. She can’t forgive me for keeping Layota’s existence a secret.”  
  
This time Gwen laughed for real. His lips twitched a bit. “Hey, you find that funny?”  
  
“Well, I find it ironic that neither of us ended up with the person we wanted so badly.”  
  
“Maybe you and Ethan could still -”  
  
She shook her head vehemently. “Never! Never, ever. I am never taking him back, even if he clawed his way on hands and knees through broken glass to get to me. He will always be a reminder of what went wrong, of how hard I held onto him that I lost everything and everyone who mattered in the end. Besides, Theresa will happily move into my place. That’s all she’s ever wanted and she can have him, as far as I’m concerned. He hurt me more than anyone ever has and I can’t forget that.”  
  
“I understand.”  
  
“Do you? You and Ethan are close…”  
  
“Yeah, but believe it or not, I don’t think he handled this the right way. I can love him like a brother, but still see the error of his ways. I can even call him on them.”  
  
“Don’t bother. He doesn’t care.”  
  
“Don’t say that. He misses your daughter too.”  
  
“It doesn't matter,” Gwen said. She sagged in his embrace. “I just don’t care how he feels right now. Maybe I never will. I am alone in the world, aren’t I?”  
  
“Nope, you’ve got … me.”  
  
“Chad, I refuse to be anyone’s charity case, let alone yours.”  
  
“You aren’t, believe me, the last thing you could ever be is my charity case.”  
  
“Then what will I be?”  
  
“My new friend?” He questioned. “Do you think we can at least try to be friends?”  
  
Gwen worried her bottom lip between her teeth. It was such insanity - the idea of Gwen Hotchkiss and Chad Harris being friends. They were from complete opposite sides of the tracks; they had absolutely nothing in common… And yet, he was offering her an olive branch here and she would be a fool not to take it.  
  
“Can we try the friendship thing?” Chad asked. “I’m willing to give it a shot if you are.”  
  
Gwen slowly nodded. “Yes, alright. I think … I think we can try anyway. I don’t have many friends. Okay, I have none,” she admitted in shame.  
  
“Well now you do,” Chad said. He squeezed her shoulders and then pointed up at the dark sky. “The first star of the night just came out. You get to make a wish.”  
  
“I don’t believe in that silly superstition.”  
  
“What can it hurt?” Chad said. “Make a wish. Just don’t tell me what it is or it won’t come true.”  
  
Gwen looked up at the twinkling light in the sky and made an impromptu wish, one off the cuff really. She wished that she wouldn't be alone anymore to stumble through her grief by herself.  
  
Chad tightened his grip on her and she sighed. She knew suddenly that her wish had already come true.

**Author's Note:**

> Did that turn out alright? Before they messed up Chad so bad, I really thought that he and Gwen would have made a unique but intriguing couple. Anyway, some feedback would be wonderful!


End file.
